Source Outlook by Annie Samson
It was an eventful year for Indian art with domestic artists gaining international visibility through a series of exclusive shows abroad, even as the country attracted the global art fraternity.
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Publié par
Herve Perdriolle

samedi 27 décembre 2014

Source Blouin Art Info by Archana Khare-Ghose.
I have been to India Art Fair but unfortunately not Kochi Biennale. I know Bose Krishnamachari and Jitish Kallat very well and I think it is an interesting approach to have artists curate a biennale. As for the India Art Fair, I was completely impressed as it was really a get-together of the entire Indian art scene – it was wonderful that everyone who is part of the Indian art scene came together. For me, the fair was not on a corresponding level. I think the problem of India Art Fair is that whenever Indian art was a trend in the global art world, it received a certain international success. However, whenever that stopped, it fell back into a pure Indian event, which is a pity. In other words, to build up an international art fair with success, you have to give the art fair a unique identity. If the only identity is a geographical one, then it is clear that you can only depend on the geographical region. That is exactly what happened to the India Art Fair.
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Source The New Indian Express
“The public here make the Biennale incredible. All the same, this Biennale, which features a conversation between the artists of India and artists from the world, provides the public with a new tool box of thinking and a new optic lens to the world,” said Enwezor, who divides much of his time between New York and Munich even as he has been curating and co-curating several groundbreaking exhibitions and eight biennales around the globe.KMB-14 director of programmes Riyas Komu said that Enwezor’s visit, who is the curator of the upcoming seven-month long Venice Biennale, was ‘one of the proudest moments for our biennale.’ “This shows that Kochi is becoming a site of engagement,” he added.
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Publié par
Herve Perdriolle

mercredi 24 décembre 2014

Source Mumbai Mirror by Reema Gehi
"Culture is a human right," he says, emphatically. "It's what defines a nation. And the government needs to recognise that. They should stand for it and support it." Out here, Dercon seems particularly impressed by the "fantastic" installation created in clay, polyurethane, hay and found objects, by 26-year-old Mumbai artist Sahej Rahal, and considers artist Prajakta Potnis his "big discovery". "Her work is one of the most important at this Biennale," he believes.
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Publié par
Herve Perdriolle

vendredi 19 décembre 2014

Source The Hindu by Priyadarshini S.
The role of the artist here is very interesting because they don multiple roles as researchers, artists, writers, curators and publishers. They even produce, sell, buy and market. The project on artist books by Samit Das at Yousuf gallery; the little museum and photo books of Dayanita Singh, works of Amar Kanwar are examples. What is also very interesting is that we in the West broke up the connection between art and craft in the 19th Century. In India this was broken in the ‘40s and ‘50s. Dashrath Patel tried to maintain it. Now this split is being reconnected vigorously.
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mercredi 17 décembre 2014

Source Auto Evolution
As part of their sponsorships, BMW claims to have engaged in over 100 cultural cooperations worldwide in the last 40 years. One of the latest ventures they are getting involved in is the second season of the Kochi-Muziris Biennale, an urban design exhibition that will showcase 100 works of 94 artists from 30 countries. Curated by the internationally renowned artist Jitish Kallat, the exhibition started on Friday and will last until March, 29, next year. Dubbed Whorled Explorations this year, the BMW Group has been a partner since the pioneering edition of the biennial in 2012.
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Source The Art Newspaper by Anny Shaw
India and Pakistan will be united at the Venice Biennale next year (9 May-22 November 2015) in an official joint presentation at the Palazzo Benzon. The Mumbai-based artist Shilpa Gupta and the Lahore-based artist Rashid Rana will share a pavilion, exhibiting under the title “My East is your West”.
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Publié par
Herve Perdriolle

dimanche 14 décembre 2014

Source Gulf News by Archisman Dinda
Nobel laureate Rabindranath Tagore’s blue-leather-and-gilt dairy has fetched the highest price of any Indian manuscript that ever went under the hammer. The journal, in which Tagore had penned poetry, calculations and musings on art from 1889 to 1904 went under the hammer for a whopping sum of Rs17 million at the Christie’s auction in Mumbai on Thursday.
“It’s likely the highest sum paid for a manuscript at an auction in India,” said Sonal Singh, head of Christie’s Mumbai office.
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Source Yahoo by Tony Tharakan
NEW DELHI (Reuters) - An online buyer from New York overcame spirited bidding to grab a painting by modern Indian artist Tyeb Mehta for $2.8 million (£1.7 million) at a Christie's auction in Mumbai, highlighting global interest in the finest works of Indian art. Mehta's untitled 1999 painting, with the central figure of a falling bull, sold to the private bidder at the auction late on Thursday, beating pre-sale estimates of between $1.3 million and $1.9 million.
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Source Outlook India by Rama Lakshmi
My biggest problem with our history museums is that they are stuck in an inflexible, indifferent and un-engaging past. We have some of the world’s most beautiful artifacts from over two millennia of history. But our museums rarely communicate captivating stories. They are built as an endless tableau of cultural pride for foreign tourists. But when will they become sites of conversation and civic engagement? When will they enter the contemporary arguments about identity and growth?
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Source New Indian Express by Anilkumar T
India is yet to derive a mechanism to mobilise adequate funds from different sources. “In UK, we too faced a similar situation, and to tide over the financial crisis, we adopted a ‘lucky draw’ system, for which the UK government allowed national lottery fund. We received 1.5 million pounds from lottery funding and it benefited the people too. Usually, these funds are used to bolster contemporary art forms,” said Rob Lynes, director British Council Division.
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Source DNA by Farah Siddiqui
ivan Sundaram holds a very special place among cerebral contemporary artists – continuously evolving, experimenting and pushing boundaries. One of India's pioneering installation and video artists, Sundaram crossed over seamlessly in the 1990s from a 30-year practice of painting towards new path-breaking and precedent-defying art making experiences. He is one artist who has constantly challenged himself. He plays several roles at one time — artist, rebel, activist, archivist, curator and historian — bringing fresh insights to bridging the synapses between the past and the future.
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Source The Hindu by S. Anandan
While the Kerala government hesitates to fund the Kochi Muziris Biennale — the second edition of which got under way across venues in mainland and coastal Kochi — the Shiv Nadar Foundation is set to throw its weight behind the initiative which has been instrumental in contemporary art gaining traction in India. The foundation will plough in about Rs. 1 crore to support various educational projects launched as part of the Biennale. “We are entering into an agreement with the Kochi Biennale Foundation next week based on which we will extend support to the students’ and children’s projects,” Kiran Nadar, chairperson of the Kiran Nadar Museum of Art in Delhi and trustee of Shiv Nadar Foundation, told The Hindu at Aspinwall House, the main venue, on Saturday.
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Publié par
Herve Perdriolle

samedi 13 décembre 2014

Source DNA
Three artists, who work with the tribal art form of Gond, have been selected to display their artworks at the upcoming literature festival in Jaipur. The trio, Bhajju Shyam, Venkat Raman Singh Shyam, and Roshni Vyam have been picked as the winners of the inaugural Ojas Art Award recently. The award has been co-organised by Delhi-based art body Ojas Art with Teamwork Arts, which produces the Zee Jaipur Literature Festival. Noted Gond artist Bhajju Shyam, who has previously exhibited at the Museum of London and toured UK, Germany, Holland, Italy and Russia, bagged the first prize which comprises a cash award of Rs 51,000.
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Publié par
Herve Perdriolle

vendredi 12 décembre 2014

Source The Wall Street Journal by Shanoor Seervai
A murmur rippled through the bidders at Christie’s second-ever auction in India on Thursday when V.S. Gaitonde’s abstract aquamarine painting was brought to the podium. Last December, at the London-based auction house’s first India sale, one of Mr. Gaitonde’s paintings fetched $3.8 million, the highest price ever paid in India for a modern work of art and an auction record for the artist. This time, the bidding for Mr. Gaitonde’s untitled work started just under $500,000, and within minutes it was sold for $1.06 million to an anonymous Asian telephone bidder, making it the third-costliest lot of the evening. Although modern Indian art dominated the sale, Christie’s also extended its support to the country’s top contemporary artists including Subodh Gupta, Bharti Kher and Atul Dodiya. Ten contemporary works were auctioned to benefit Khoj International Artists’ Association, a New Delhi-based collective, and fetched over $304,000 in total.
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Source Business Standard by Avantika Bhuyan
It was in the late 1960s, when refugees from Tibet had started making their way into India in the wake of the 14th Dalai Lama’s self-exile in Dharamshala, that Roshan Sabavala started nurturing her love for art. Art enthusiasts such as Karl Khandalavala and Madhuri Desai, founder of the Bhulabhai Desai Institute, encouraged her. Unlike collectors in the ’60s and ’70s who were gravitating towards the emerging modernist scene in India, Sabavala started collecting ancient Nepalese and Indian bronzes and then artefacts from Tibet. It is from her collection that 121 lots of sculptures, paintings and silver will be auctioned at Pundole’s on December 16.
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Publié par
Herve Perdriolle

jeudi 11 décembre 2014

Source BBC News
The top seller at the Mumbai sale was a painting by Indian artist Tyeb Mehta, which sold for $2.8m. The auction house sold a total of 78 art works at Thursday's auction. Last December Christie's had sold 83 art works and raised more than $15m at its first-ever art sale in India. Christie's second sale in India featured paintings by several Indian masters including MF Husain, SH Raza and author-artist Rabindranath Tagore. The top selling work was an acrylic on canvas painting of a falling bull by Mehta, one of India's top artists. Sonal Singh, Christie's head of department in Mumbai, told the AFP news agency that said second sales were "always a little bit harder", but added that "the depth of the market is visible, quality works are in demand".
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Hindustan Times by Riddhi Doshi
This time, the Kerala government has given the foundation only Rs. 1 crore so far, against Rs. 9 crore in 2012. When the funds failed to arrive at the last minute, the foundation set up a crowdfunding initiative in mid-November that has, online and offline, raised lakhs already, with artists and art connoisseurs pitching in tens of lakhs each. Artist Vivan Sundaram, for instance, donated Rs. 40 lakh and Sudhir Patwardhan Rs. 10 lakh, and they have decided to bear the cost of creating and installing their own works at the site. "Many other artists and even some galleries have come forward to bear the cost of creating and installing art works," says Bose. "Art lovers such as gallerists Shireen Gandhy and Abhay Maskara and collector Poonam Shroff have also been acting as ambassadors for the biennale, calling on friends to donate funds. Overall, the response has been very heartfelt, and very heartening."
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Source The Indian Express by Poonam Goel
Jangarh Singh Shyam was one of the most celebrated folk artists of our country. He showed his works at the prestigious Magicians of the Earth exhibition at Pompidou Centre in Paris alongside leading western artists such as Francesco Clemente. To honour the memory of this talented tribal artist, Delhi-based Gallerie Ganesha is hosting a show of his works along with those of Shyam’s daughter Japani Shyam in a two-person show starting on December 18. Shyam, born in 1962, belonged to the Gond tribe of Madhya Pradesh. As a boy who lived in the jungles of Mandla in Madhya Pradesh, he was discovered by the legendary artist J Swaminathan. Says Shobha Bhatia, director, Gallerie Ganesha, “From his home town where he created mural paintings to his last works before his death in 2001, he continued to evolve and his creativity matched that of the greatest names in contemporary art.”
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Source The Times of India by Law Kumar Mishra
Mishra, while delivering a lecture on Mithila archaeology at Bihar Research Society here on Thursday, said nowadays it is the buyers who decide the design and theme of the paintings. "People of Mithila are learning the art from trainers in towns and metropolitan cities, not from its experts from Mithila. These trainers themselves do not know the essence and aesthetic beauty of the silk art," he said, adding, "in the name of tantric painting, women have ignored the traditions of Mithila and they see it as just a job opportunity.
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Publié par
Herve Perdriolle

samedi 6 décembre 2014

Source Reuters by Tony Thakaran
India is falling behind China as an emerging powerhouse on the global art scene because it rarely turns up at international art fairs or invests in new museums to promote its artists, an official at auctioneer Christie’s said. Amin Jaffer, international director of Asian art at Christie’s, said the Chinese government, unlike India, is enhancing its museums and encouraging art exhibitors. Jaffer spoke to Reuters about the art scene in India and where he sees Christie’s India auctions a decade from now.
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Source The Art Newspaper by Julia Halperin
An untitled work on paper by Henry Darger, around 1940-60 (above), sold at Christie’s, Paris on 2 December for €601,500 (est €180,000-€250,000), a record for the artist and a new benchmark for Outsider art at auction.
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Source Christies by Lavender Au
When the artists community at Khoj was established in 1987, Indian art was still a conservative arena. There were few galleries and artists rarely travelled, meaning Khoj represented an exciting and important development for the domestic art community. A carefully selected group of artists settled into the studio in Khirkee Village, New Delhi, where they occasionally drank and danced into the small hours. They also debated their practices, formed networks and exchanged ideas. In the words of one of the founding members, Pooja Sood, Khoj ‘existed for artists by artists’. Khoj, which holds artist residencies, workshops and acts as a communal space for artist communication and exploration, now stands in the vanguard of the contemporary Indian art scene.
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This newsletter posted by Hervé Perdriolle in October 2007, tracks the news of the Indian Contemporary Art through an international press review regularly updated.Since 2008 more than 1.800 press articles listed - 145.000 pages viewed.